Playing without saving

[DancZer 65]

Hi community!

I want to start discussion of the saving in the game.

I really like the immersion of the arma. I can enjoy the fights and I'm really satisfied, when i can finish a mission without save.

Saving game is a immersion break(in my opinion). You can kill enemies one by one until you reach your destination. I think i'm not the only one who do that! Why players do that? I think it is because they can't play good enough to do that OR in the missions enemies are overpowered.

I'm playing on regular difficulty(save available) and i had many situations in campaign and showcases where i have to do this trick. This sometimes lead to that i finish the mission alone. All team member fall down.

Example showcase infantry. Our team contains five man, against 15-20 enemy?! Can it be a real situation? Is that realistic? I tried it multiple times today(10+) without luck.

What i'm trying to say that some missions even the player made missions are overpowered. I think mission editors sometimes can't estimate what players can handle. I think in mission where you forced to save it is not a good mission. I played 2 or 3 weeks ago ARMA Cold war crisis and it was much much easier to play. I could finish missions 3-4 tries without save.

I don't want to insult anybody. I just wanted to share my feelings, why i rage quit of the game so often. :)

What about you? Do you save often?

[artisanal 22]

Well, I don't know how it is for you but in regular difficulty I can only save once or twice (can't exactly remember) per mission.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

I don't save. But per say, i think the reason why there more AI in a team against just you and 4 other team mate AI's, does with the fact your Human and the enemy is not. The fact the Enemy can't think like we do, move like we do, and fight as well as we would, they're is a higher number to account for the incapability for them to be as good as we are. AI will never be as good as us, it's impossible. Now, to the point where beating the game with or without saves... I agree, saving is immersion breaking, you die ounce, your aloud to come back... The AI don't get that treat. Unless i died for some crappy reason, ill restart the entire mission.

[Bouben 3]

Well, I save from time to time, because you cannot depend on AI too much. They are too talented to do something stupid (like being stuck in a cover, or kill you by friendly fire etc.) that will force you to restart the whole mission. And that sucks.

But since I play mostly totally random, dynamic scenarios in the mission editor I usually don't save at all.

Anyway, I am a big fan of ironman mode (no saving) in turn based strategies.

Edited July 10, 2014 by Bouben
grammar

[Sub-Human 10]

I play on Veteran difficulty (one user save per mission), and that's highly frustrating. Not only do I have to engage the enemy (often by myself), but I also have to watch after my AI squadmates who are useless. As for Operation Flashpoint, that game is not particularly 'easier', but because it only takes one or two shots to kill someone it rewards proper tactics and patience much more than ArmA 3.

If you play online in a co-operative mission you will see that it's not difficult to engage enemies who outnumber you even 10 to 1. But in singleplayer it's a real hassle...

[Rydygier 1317]

For sure "no saves" approach strongly affects player's gameplay way, is more immersive, you care more, what you're doing. But in the same time it is highly frustrating. I'm playing for fun, not for frustration. And I'm preffering long missions, where such approach is insane.

I'm saving very often in all games and I'm mostly fine with it, although such habit becomes a bit tiring in some cases. IMO depends, what's exactly the source of fun in the game for the given player - pure experiencing of gameplay alone, where has no meaning, how often you have to repeat again and again same thing, you enjoy it anyway, or also progress, and in this case, my case, often repeating from the beginning, frequent loosing the progress, becomes frustrating and makes gameplay not funny at all.

In fact availability of unlimited saves anytime is for me one of the crucial factors, when I'm deciding which game should I buy. Without it in the most cases buying such game would be wasting of money, as in return I'm getting annoyance and mood breaker, not good entertainment.

Mission designed for "no save" playing has low chance to get my attention, as most probably will be too easy. For me, if I wasn't forced to load saved game at least once - mission was most probably wrongly designed - not challenging enough or too short and thus probably boring, unless is interesting for other reasons. It's not a rule carved in stone nor direct causal relationship, just statistical dependency. Of course, if I'm forced to load too many times, it is equally bad too and frustrating again, this time as too difficult.

"No save" gaming for me could work and be, due to immersion boost effect, prefferable way only for very short episodes focused solely on telling the piece of the story. And I'm hoping, such kind of missions will be present, but only as minor part of the overall selection.

Edited July 11, 2014 by Rydygier

[surfer 42]

I'm currently preparing a mission which focuses on atmosphere and low enemy count. It will take minimum 2 hours, more likely 4 hours to finish it and it will have NO saves. I'm doing this by giving you 3 AI teammates and a revive script (Farooq's Revive in this case). This way you will have to plan your attacks carefully and always try to keep at least one teammember alive. During the mission several NPCs might join you, filling up the ranks of the soldiers you couldn't heal in time. If you play it as SP it might work to leave the game and continue later but that's a different kind of save.

I don't like missions where you don't have to worry about your character's life. If at all respawns should take a few minutes and the enemy should also fill up their ranks.

[IndeedPete 1038]

I'm a total save game guy, I save after every few metres of walking and every enemy I killed. I even cheated on OFP and Resistance with the SAVEGAME cheat. And I'd totally vote for a proper quicksave system in A3. However, leaving that optional would be the best thing to do to not piss off the hardcore Arma vets who can't wait to die and replay hour long missions from the beginning.^^

As Rydygier said, it's just frustrating, especially in longer missions. And I usually split longer missions in multiple sessions. I'm not much of an actual player anyway, I usually spend my time around the editor. And when I start up a (good) user mission, I often see some feature or idea I like, my creative process kicks in, I turn down the mission and go straight back to the editor. Same thing with my own work. I can't just sit back and enjoy the fruits of my work. There's always something to do, I always see something that needs improvement. A dialogue here, a typo there....

@Surfer: Please keep save games for SP enabled. When I was playtesting your mission I did like five or six sessions of a few minutes each over two days.

[mistyronin 1181]

It's an interesting subject, about fights between 5 men against 25 ( so 1 vs 5 ) can be perfectly realistic, in fact the history books are full of them and even more exaggerated numbers ( well just check the death toll of the Operation Gothic Serpent a couple dozens of Americans and Pakistanis vs hundreds of Somalians ). The ORBAT was 160 US vs aprox 4000-6000 Somalians.

You can't almost never know how many enemies are in a certain place not even the super US spec ops in Afghanistan with UAVs, CAS and so on could figure it out ( read for instance Lions of Kandahar or We were young and soldiers ). So it's always a gamble for the officers to know how many troops should they deploy in certain positions.

Said that, I prefer in my missions to give some realistic points ( for instance copying the numbers from the actual reports on situations similar to the ones I want to reproduce ).

In RL soldiers also die, and as that would be the Game Over I prefer to have some saves, to not have to repeat everything.

Edited July 11, 2014 by MistyRonin

[DancZer 65]

It's an interesting subject, about fights between 5 men against 25 ( so 1 vs 5 ) can be perfectly realistic, in fact the history books are full of them and even more exaggerated numbers ( well just check the death toll of the Operation Gothic Serpent a couple dozens of Americans and Pakistanis vs hundreds of Somalians ). The ORBAT was 160 US vs aprox 4000-6000 Somalians.

Just one question. :) Does the Somalians had Armor Level 3 protection? :D

[Tonci87 163]

I like to save just so that I can revert if my AI gets stuck or something else happens You never know with this game...

[Grumpy Old Man 3546]

Saving is a good thing, especially on longer missions.

I guess everyone who played A2 can agree with me that the amount of nonsensical deaths has been greatly reduced in arma3. (remember those "turn around inside a doorframe" deaths and the likes?)

[DancZer 65]

Last time i played online was with Arma 2. But since Arma 3 i could play only offline with AI. PVP is much easier because the enemy is player too and play/behave same.

AI can shoot from positions where player was not able or will not shoot. For me it is OK, because i think to the AI like a real soldier who know how to fight. Maybe in a real world i would able to notice him, but on the screen in 2D is much much harder. I think this is the source of the frustration for me. An the bug factor is still there too.

I like the long missions too and i'm not against the "autosave" or the "exit and save". It is a necessary in the game. I just miss an easyer missions.

[mistyronin 1181]

Just one question. :) Does the Somalians had Armor Level 3 protection? :D

But that is just one of the variables, equipment, training, moral, familiarity with the terrain, weather, luck etc.

Just look at the Winter War between the Soviet Union vs Finland, and a long etc.

Wars aren't generally won by numbers not even by technology or money, the Castilian Conquistadores took almost all America and were a few thousands against millions.